Service Array

Service Delivery

Service delivery follows the terms laid out in the family’s plan and are adjusted as indicated by ongoing assessment of their needs.

When multiple service systems are involved with a family, successful delivery requires linking and coordinating systems, both formal and informal, to meet the family’s needs, minimize duplication of activities and support continuous movement toward agreed upon goals. Service delivery is coordinated and integrated to achieve all of the family’s objectives. For every individual child, strategic community partnerships are formed to develop services that best meet the identified needs.

Documentation of decisions and accomplishments are maintained in the case record and communicated regularly with the youth and family.

Consistent and meaningful contact includes assessment of current status of the child, youth and family with regard to safety, risk and family service plan goals.

Service plans contain a mix of concrete youth and family-driven services and therapeutic services that result in meaningful change.

If reasonable efforts at service delivery do not result in the child and/or youth being safe within the family, reasons for removal of the child are clearly communicated to all involved. The family is given the opportunity to provide placement resources for consideration by the agency. Placement is done in the best interest of the child and/or youth with first consideration to kinship providers or providers within one’s tribe. Maintaining a child in the least restrictive environment is paramount.

If a child and/or youth is removed from their home and placed in the custody of the agency, the agency has accepted responsibility for the well-being of the child and services are delivered with an acceptance of that primary responsibility. These services include meeting all of the health, mental health and educational needs for children in foster care.

Contact and service supports to children and youth in placement and their caregivers are based on individual needs, not limited to the minimum mandated by policy or statute.

Resource families are better able to meet children and youth’s needs when they are included as full members of the team. Such inclusion means providing full and honest disclosure regarding children’s needs and circumstances and seeking and heeding resources parents’ input regarding the needs of children in their care.

Resource families require consistent support throughout the placement of children in their homes. Such supports include training that specifically targets the needs of the children in their care, timely linkage to appropriate clinical (e.g., individualized behavior management) and concrete (e.g., respite, transportation) services and making consistent contact to monitor children’s adjustment, family capacity and the need for additional intervention.

Service delivery does not end at the time of return home from placement. This time of “aftercare” often requires varying degrees of intensive services, individualized to the child and families’ needs to assure a permanent return home. When a child is returned home from placement, services should remain in place and be closely supervised until such time that the agency can end services based on the parents’ ability to sustain child safety and well-being.

In the event of termination of parental rights, permanent legal guardianship or reunification, an array of post-permanency services is available to the child, youth and adoptive family to prevent disruption. Families find services to be easily assessable and available to meet their needs and support the permanency of their child.

Services are delivered within the cultural context of the children, youth and family being served. Practices implemented in the agency are culturally sensitive, respectful of human diversity and applied within a context of a family/youth engagement model for case planning and decision-making.

Services provided by contracted providers meet the requirements of the public child welfare agency’s practice model.